The unknown love story between Barcelona and the billionaire who bought Espanyol

BarcelonaEspanyol has a new owner. Alan Pace, a partner at the ALK Capital fund and director of its sports subsidiary, Velocity Sport Limited (VSL), will take over from Chen Yansheng at the helm of the blue and white club. With an English parent company but partly owned by American shareholders, VSL also owns Burnley. With this transaction, Rastar, which currently holds 99.66% of the shares, will become part of the English holding company.

This, however, is not the first time Pace has arrived in Barcelona. In 1991, fresh from graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the now businessman arrived in the Catalan capital to pursue an MBA (master of business administration) at the Iese business school. At the time, Barcelona was preparing to host the Olympic Games, Barça had yet to win a Champions League title, and Espanyol was in the process of ceasing to be a shareholder and becoming a public limited company. During his time there, as he states on his LinkedIn profile, Pace fell in love with football. In fact, he explains how, during a 1992 Clásico, he saw Hristo Stoichkov give the Catalans the win in the 87th minute. This sparked in him a "long-term ambition to be at the forefront of football."

But, far from Espanyol or Barça, during his time at Barcelona, Pace frequented much more humble fields in the country. At the height of American football's boom in the city, with the arrival of the Barcelona Dragons also in 1991, the businessman signed for Barcelona Búfals del Poblenou, who were playing in the Catalan league. Pace played as a running back and his former teammates still remember him. "He was a great guy; he fell in love with Barcelona and has had a special fondness for it ever since," explains his former teammate Joan, a fictitious name because he prefers to remain anonymous.

Another member of that team is Toni Ceballos, a true parakeet and current head coach of Barcelona Pagesos. Both Ceballos and Joan remember Pace through different anecdotes. "After each and every game, his wife would bring us a Tupperware of chocolate cookies in the locker room. They were so delicious, we all lit candles waiting for them," Ceballos recounts. He played for Barcelona for two seasons and made good friends.

Another anecdote they both recall came in 2008. Fourteen years after he left Barcelona, the group of former teammates organized a veterans' match. Pace showed up. "It surprised us; it speaks volumes about what he was like as a teammate," Joan explains, and Ceballos adds: "And after the game... guess what he brought his wife? Chocolate cookies!"

In fact, Pace's connection to the fabric of Catalan American football meant that, last year, with Barcelona Dragons ruined and facing extinction, a group of people close to the club met with him to ask him to invest in the project. The American declined the request, arguing that it was a "ruinous" business, as a person present at the meeting explained to ARA. Incidentally, this isn't the only connection between Espanyol's new investment group and American football: one of VSL's shareholders is JJ Watt, an NFL superstar who hung up his helmet and armor in 2022.

From Real Salt Lake to Burnley

Pace left Barcelona in 1994 to return to the United States. There, he made a career at Lehman Brothers, the flagship investment bank of the great economic crisis of 2008. But he narrowly escaped it: in 2006, he left his position as CEO of the company to become the president of Real Salt Lake of Major League Soccer (MLS), a league where others now operate. Curiously, Real Salt Lake carries the "Real" decoration in its name, a reference to the Spanish clubs that also wear it, such as Real Club Deportivo Español.

He had a brief stay at the American club and in 2008 he left the project. However, that first experience with the elite of the soccer It must have left a thorn in his side: twelve years later, in 2020, Pace joined Burnley in England hoping to consolidate their position in the Premier League. This year, after being relegated last season, the club achieved a second-place finish in the Championship, earning them a return to the English top flight.